I Can't Defeat the Evil Overlord, it Could Wrinkle my Dress!

I am going to raise an issue with something that I’m sure some people will not agree with, one that throws into light a fact that has mostly been ignored for years. The leading ladies in Nintendo’s video game franchise need to cross-dress in order to get anything done. I am talking about Samus Aran and Princess Zelda: two girls who are supposed to be strong and independent, but it seems the only times they get to show that strength are when you can’t tell if they are male or female.

I know I am not alone when I say that the first time I ever played Metroid, I assumed that I was playing a male character. There were no hints, no pronouns to give away Samus’ gender. But then, after that final battle, a point in the game which some players never even reached, the identity of this person in the robot suit is revealed… And it’s not the macho manly man that everyone was expecting. It was someone who, if you squinted enough, kind of looked like a girl.

Why is there suddenly a half naked girl on my screen?

Ever since the unveiling of her gender, Samus has represented a strange phenomenon in gaming. When she is wearing her suit and the game focuses on shooting aliens, she’s an incredibly powerful character; however, once the suit comes off (I’m looking at you Metroid: Other M) she’s suddenly supposed to act like… well, a girl. But not any reasonable girl. She is turned into a girl that you’d almost expect to find on a soap opera, gazing dependently upon some strong male lead.

Another representation of this phenomenon in a Nintendo franchise is in the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. You would think as the title character Zelda would be portrayed as a hearty defender of her realm. She’s the princess of Hyrule. She wields the triforce of wisdom. She was brought up by a clan of people who are basically ninjas. But, when it comes to final confrontations, apparently all she’s good for is getting imprisoned in a giant rupee, or yelling encouragement from the sideline while standing right next to the most powerful weapon in the kingdom.

The only parts of Ocarina of Time where Zelda is being useful, you don’t know that it’s her. Instead, she takes on the guise of a man called Sheik, who appears out of nowhere sporadically to help you on your quest. When Zelda is Sheik, she is taken seriously. When she’s herself, people completely change their attitudes. For instance, when Zelda is young and sends a message to a guard, saying that it’s imperative that he listen to her, the guard laughs it off. It can’t just be her age that is the problem, because that same guard comes to respect Link, the main protagonist who is the same age as Zelda.

Same person, honest.

As soon as Sheik is revealed to be Zelda, she gets captured by Ganondorf. No, seriously. She walks around in the open for 7 years dressed up as a guy, and as soon as she’s wearing a dress again the villain is able to home in on her location and catch her. While disguised as Sheik, she spent the entire latter half of the game suddenly disappearing as soon as Link looks away, but suddenly she can’t even make an attempt at fleeing for her life because she isn’t wearing pants?

Why does this happen? Nintendo is obviously trying to make stronger female characters, but why can’t they get to the point where said characters are both useful and feminine at the same time? Samus and Zelda are repeatedly shown as capable, dependable characters, and it does not make any sense when they change drastically in the middle of a game just because the player is allowed to perceive them as female.

Sadly, this portrayal of females as mostly harmless unless they’re “one of the guys” is in all likelihood due to the male dominated nature of the video game industry. While times are slowly but surely changing towards a more gender equal gaming world, at the times when these games came out it was naturally assumed that the people who would be playing them were male. It may be that Zelda’s cross-dressing and Samus’ ambiguous gender were Nintendo’s way of taking a tiny step towards strong female leads. Maybe gamers of that period weren’t quite ready to play as girls who were just as capable as men, so Nintendo decided to ease them into the idea by not revealing their gender until later.

I feel like these characters in particular represent an interesting guide to female characters in video games even in more modern games. One would be hard pressed to find a female lead as strong as Samus while geared up in her Varia suit in any game today, but the suit giving her that strength is also what takes away her femininity. Would more recent characters have something to gain by hiding their genders?

Oh right...

Nintendo EAD. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Nintendo, 1998. Nintendo 64.

Nintendo and Team Ninja. Metroid. Nintendo, 1986. NES.